Skip to main content

Technical Documentation, State of the Ecosystem Report

18 Forage Fish Energy Density

Description: Forage Engery Density indicators

Found in: State of the Ecosystem - Gulf of Maine & Georges Bank (2020+), State of the Ecosystem - Mid-Atlantic (2020+)

Indicator category: Database pull with analysis

Contributor(s): Mark Wuenschel, Ken Oliveira and Kelcie Bean

Data steward: Mark Wuenschel

Point of contact: Mark Wuenschel

Public availability statement: Source data are publicly available.

18.1 Methods

The forage fish energy denisty indicator comes from a collaborative project between UMASS Dartmouth Biology Department (Dr. Ken Oliveira, M.S student Kelcie Bean) and NEFSC Population Biology Branch (Mark Wuenschel). The study focuses on evaluating energy content of the species in Table 18.1.

Table 18.1: List of forage fish study species.
Common Name Scientific Name
Atlantic Herring Clupea harengus
alewife Alosa pseudoharengus
silver hake Merluccius bilinearis
butterfish Peprilus triacanthus
northern sandlance Ammodytes dubius
Atlantic mackerel Scomber Scombrus
longfin squid Loligo pealeii
northern shortfin squid Illex illecebrosus

18.1.1 Data sources

NEFSC spring and fall bottom trawl surveys.

18.1.2 Data extraction

NA

18.1.3 Data analysis

Samples were analyzed for proximate composition and energy density from NEFSC spring and fall bottom trawl surveys. Predictive relationships between the percent dry weight of samples and energy density were developed, and samples collected from current surveys are currently being analyzed for percentage dry weight to enable estimation of energy content (Bean (2020)). The energy density of forage species differed from prior studies in the 1980s and 1990s (Steimle and Terranova (1985), Lawson, Magalhães, and Miller (1998), Table 18.1).

Sampling and laboratory analysis is ongoing, with the goal of continuing routine monitoring of energy density of these species.

18.1.4 Data processing

Code for building the table used in the SOE can be found here.

catalog link https://noaa-edab.github.io/catalog/energy_density.html

References

Bean, Kelcie. 2020. “Investigating Patterns in Proximate Composition and Energy Density of Northwest Atlantic Forage Species.” Master’s thesis, University of Dartmouth, Department of Biology.
Lawson, John W., Alexandra M. Magalhães, and Edward H. Miller. 1998. “Important Prey Species of Marine Vertebrate Predators in the Northwest Atlantic: Proximate Composition and Energy Density.” Marine Ecology Progress Series 164: 13–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24825521.
Steimle, Frank W., and Russell Terranova. 1985. “Energy Equivalents of Marine Organisms from the Continental Shelf of the Temperate Northwest Atlantic.” Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science 6: 117–24.